Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican speaks:

Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican said the Lebanese conflict had no victor, but it served to focus world attention on the threat of global Islamic terrorism.

At the same time, the aftermath of the fighting offers an opportunity for the West — and the Catholic Church — to support moderate Muslims by helping to rebuild Lebanon and resettle refugees, the ambassador, Oded Ben-Hur, said in an interview with Catholic News Service Aug. 16.

The ambassador also encouraged church leaders to promote a new wave of pilgrimages to the Middle East, which he said would send a calming message and help restore normality in the region.

A U.N.-brokered cease-fire was being implemented in mid-August after a monthlong Israeli offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. The fighting killed more than 1,200 people, most of them Lebanese civilians, and destroyed homes, roads, bridges and factories throughout the country.

Ben-Hur lamented the loss of life and destruction on both sides and said the war had "no winners or losers."

"We don’t need to claim victory because there is no room for victory. Let (Hezbollah) claim victory. We would like to claim peace," he said.

He said Hezbollah fighters had hidden behind civilians during the conflict, using the inevitable victims as instruments of propaganda in the media. As a result, he said, Israel’s image was damaged.

But the ambassador said some good had come out of the Lebanese fighting. For one thing, he said, the West can see more clearly that the actual root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict is "extremist Islam and terrorism."

Ben-Hur said Hezbollah was part of a larger terrorist phenomenon that stretches from Hamas in the Palestinian territories to al-Qaida in southern Asia and other groups in Indonesia.

"We have a problem on a world scale, and we have to deal with it. The Western world should react with a relentless, unyielding war against terrorism, uprooting them, stopping all their financial sources and looking for them wherever they are," he said.